The only problem was that programming didn’t come naturally to her. It was work.
Carol had lived and breathed becoming the best tool for the job so she could ensure a career at the CIA. She’d made it eight years. So much for a lifetime of serving her country.
The kettle began to whistle, slicing into her thoughts and bringing her back to her cabin prison. She saw Andy’s shadow move out of the corner of her eye, but she didn’t hear him. She tilted her head and listened to him pull the kettle off the stove, silencing the shrill noise and pouring the water. If it weren’t for other things making sound, she’d never hear Andy. He walked like a cat.
He’d been in her home. Her safe place. She’d never again be able to relax in her house without feeling eyes on her. She’d never be able to be in her home, period. That chapter of her life was over. Oh, Andy was right. There was a small chance this might turn out okay for her, but it was best to prepare herself for the worst and proceed as such.
“Here you go.” Andy set a mug on the coaster next to her.
She glanced at the cup. Anything he gave her was suspect.
“Lady Grey tea, see?” He flipped the tag at the end of the string toward her, the familiar blue label giving her some comfort.
She’d told Mark that she liked the tea. Mark wasn’t a real person.
“Thanks.” She kept her eyes on the screen. From time to time she looked at Andy, but his eyes, they were Mark’s. It made her question things. Him. He couldn’t be both people. Mark was a lie.
“Anything I can do?” he asked.
“No.”
“You’ve been staring at that screen for an hour without moving. Maybe I can help?”
“Do you know anything about A9 search engines or programming?” She glanced up at him. What would an assassin know?
“I do.”
“What?”
“Programming. I can help. I haven’t worked A9 before, but I bet I can pick it up fairly fast. This is why Irene wanted me here to help. I can lend you a hand with the programming—if you want.” Andy slid into the chair next to her and pulled a laptop out from one of the seats.
“Where do you learn this stuff?” She frowned at him, watching his fingers fly over the keys, logging into the machine.
“I spent some time in prison. Needed to do something with my time, so I took some classes, got a degree.” He said it all so nonchalantly, as though everyone had a stop in jail.
“Who’d you get caught killing?” she asked.
“Actually, I was put in prison for refusing to kill.”
“What? How does that even work?” She twisted to stare at his profile.
“You know who I am and you don’t know that?”
“Sorry, I was too busy reading The Care and Feeding of Your Assassin to get to that part. No, I don’t know.”
Andy snorted and the corners of his mouth curled up.
“You’re funny when you’re pissed off,” he said.
“Spill.” She’d been at this for hours. A little break wasn’t a terrible thing.
Andy took his hands off the keyboard and stared at her. He’d already shown her the one thing about him that could put innocent people at risk. His pressure point. The family in some rural town who didn’t know where he was.
“I was a SEAL. A sniper. And a damn good one. At first, I didn’t ask questions. I didn’t want to know. I did what I was told, went where I was told, even though I knew…I knew what we were doing wasn’t protecting people. I let it go, and I kept going, until…there was this one mission.” He stared into her teacup, gaze distant. He wasn’t here anymore, he was somewhere else. “There was collateral damage.”
Translation, someone died who wasn’t supposed to. Judging by the lines bracketing Andy’s mouth, Carol was willing to bet it was bad.
“I started asking questions after that. I figured out pretty fast that we weren’t doing things to protect civilian lives. We were furthering corporations’ interests. For what? Money?” Andy shook his head. “I refused the next orders I was given, was court-martialed and tossed in prison. That was when I started taking classes.”
“Is that how you wound up here?” Carol shouldn’t ask questions. Knowledge was both power and death in this world, but she was curious who he was if he wasn’t Mark.
“Technically, I’m still in that hole. I’d done some work for the CIA. They offered me a deal—be their man, and they’d put a guy in my cell to serve out my time.”
“Who is he?”
“Some guy who was going to get killed being in the general prison population.” Andy gestured to the laptop. “Want me to take a shot.”
“How would that even work? Does he look like you?”
“The government took care of that.”
“How?” There would be personal data, driver’s license, yearbooks.
“You want me to walk you through everything we did to erase my history, or do you want to get some work done?”
Carol stared at him, weighing her options. If he could help, it would be a godsend. She’d been building this thing on her own from the beginning using the A9 open source code. What if she’d missed something and he wanted to destroy it? Could she trust him? There were backups, but if he had all of her equipment he could have corrupted those, too. Which meant the copy she was working with could be doctored as well.
“We’re on the same side, Carol. Remember?” Andy tilted his head.
“That’s just it. I don’t know that for sure.” She grimaced and nudged her laptop toward him.
He connected the two using a USB cable. Within moments he had the same thing pulled up on his screen. She held her breath and chewed her lip. He rubbed his finger along his lower lip, the rasp of his stubble the loudest thing in the room.
Carol shook her head and glanced at the tea.
“This chunk here, it’s junking up your process.” Andy highlighted several lines. “This is all about reporting on the user. We don’t care because we are the ones using it, you know?”
“True, but I had issues when I took that out, so I left it in.”
“That’s probably because there will be an initiating sequence up here.”
“But that’s not even my problem.”
“Let’s start with this and then we’ll backtrack, okay?”
She gritted her teeth and sipped the tea he’d brought her. Why work on one thing when the problem was something else?
“You did a great job with the base parameters. I hadn’t thought of returning results in clearance clusters.” He kept tapping away at the keys.
Carol frowned a bit harder. He was complimenting her? Why?
She focused on the screen.
Andy moved at a faster rate, scrolling almost continuously. Occasionally, he’d pause at a chunk, ask her a question or make a comment, then move on. The praise kept coming.
Was he trying to butter her up? Make her more amicable? What was he doing?
“Okay, here’s the beginning bit, here.” He tapped the screen.
She leaned forward. The jumbled bit of code didn’t read clear to her, so she’d left it.
“How do you know that?” she asked. She wasn’t too proud to not learn.
“The prefix here and this return value.”
“How did you see that? I’ve been over this part a hundred times.” She leaned closer, still not quite getting a handle on it.
“I do more crawlers than searches. When I want to follow a target, I want to know what they’re searching. If it’s not my person, I don’t care.”
“Oh.”
“Let’s say my handler comes to me. They know one of the DOD contractors is selling supplies under the table. Anyone who is dealing in things worth the CIA’s notice to call me in won’t search under their own login. What I want to identify are the user parameters. I’d code this part to compare the two previous login points, determine if it’s suspect or not, and track what they looked at. The returned information would help me narrow down who m
y mole is.”
“And that won’t work for us?” Carol asked.
“First, the CIA isn’t going to give me access to their databases or let me install code on their server. Second, the CIA is already running a log of everything people look at, keystroke programs and access logs. The people we’re dealing with, they’re embedded far enough they’ve hidden their tracks. That was one of the things Irene said she tried to work on in the beginning.”
“Oh.” Carol slumped in her seat. “How is this going to help then?”
“They’ve covered their user tracks, but they can’t cover up missions going sideways due to the enemy having information they shouldn’t. That’s why this is important.” He gestured to the laptop. “Now, you were getting an error message. Tell me about it.”
Carol sipped the tea, sorted her thoughts, then started ticking off the numerous errors she was still running into. It was infuriating because last week she’d had something that would at least return a few results. Now it was broken and she wasn’t sure how to go about fixing it. She had a minor in programming, not a full-on degree, and she certainly didn’t use these skills often. She knew enough to do simple tasks and get herself into trouble. Maybe this whole project was over her head.
She finished listing the problems and sat back.
The wind had kicked up again, whistling through the trees. She’d ventured out onto the porch for a few moments, braving the freezing temperatures for the sake of the view.
They were somewhere remote, up in mountains. They rose up on either side of the cabin, coated in snow with crowns of clouds. Their little valley was in some sort of crevice between peaks. A sort of hidden wonderland.
It was the kind of place she’d like to go. A romantic weekend getaway. The city wore her out, and from time to time all Carol wanted to do was go somewhere calmer. Too bad her closest friends thrived on the hustle and bustle. Carol had always hoped to find someone quiet and kind.
She’d been naive enough to hope that Mark might be that person. She’d met him once, but there’d been something about him, the way he got her, that made her hope. Only, Mark didn’t really exist, and Andy was a stranger to her. Mark had been so perfect because Andy created him that way. There was no point in wishing things had been different. From here on out her dream of a peaceful retreat was over. Even now it was all an illusion.
God, she was a fool.
Why would anyone want her? She wasn’t interesting or extroverted. She’d allowed herself to get silly over a man. A man she kept wondering about, if he wasn’t in some way part of Andy. Her could-have-been assassin.
“I agree, I think you’ve got an orphan something in here, but I also think you’re timing out. This is a really solid start. I think you’re close to being ready for a real test run.”
“What?” Carol sat up and blinked at Andy’s screen.
“Show me your test environment. It might not be the program at all.”
Carol needed to grow up and start thinking about her future. The clock was ticking, and when time ran out, she needed a plan, because there was no safety net.
…
Wednesday, CIA Headquarters
Kristina kept her head up. Work had run long today. The op in Iran was dragging out. Everyone was tense after what had happened in Spain. It wasn’t helping the pounding in her temples.
The assets hadn’t yet made contact, and Kristina hadn’t heard from Andy in the field yet. Carol was alive, her pet project likely still a danger. None of this was good for Kristina’s life.
The boss, the Shadow Man, had said to do nothing, but Kristina couldn’t just sit on her hands.
She could request an update from Andy. That wouldn’t set off any alarms, but she had been told to wait.
Her heels clicked on the sidewalk.
God, she hated this trek from the bus stop to her apartment. The fact that she couldn’t use the money paid to her to improve her living conditions really grated. Rules were rules, though, and if she went against what they said, she’d never get to touch that money.
Someday, she’d quit this job, the double life, and retire to an island somewhere. Hell, she might just buy an island. The interest her money was earning alone could be enough to live off modestly.
Kristina quickstepped up the stairs, keyed in the door code, and let herself into the building. It wasn’t the worst place she’d ever lived, but it also wasn’t entirely nice. Still, there were security cameras and a locked door. It provided her with at least the semblance of security. She wasn’t stupid enough to think those meager deterrents would stop the people she worked for.
That was why, no matter what she wanted to do, what she thought was best, she’d do what she was told. Because that was how she ensured she got to that beach-retirement package with years left to appreciate it.
She climbed the stairs to her apartment. It wasn’t one of the coveted corner ones, but then again, it didn’t have all those windows. No fire-escape access, either. The only way in or out was through her front door.
Kristina unlocked her apartment and let the door drift open, the hall light casting a long rectangle of illumination. She flipped on the lights, and only when she was certain the main living area wasn’t holding any surprises for her did she enter.
Another day survived.
She locked the door, hung her coat up, and blew out a breath.
“Keep looking at the wall,” a female voice said.
Kristina froze, her heart hammering against her ribs.
“This is how this works. You don’t see our face, we don’t see your face, got it?”
“Yes,” Kristina said without stammering.
“Great. The boss said you have an important job for us.”
A job?
The man in the shadows hadn’t handed down orders himself?
Was this some sort of test?
Kristina cleared her throat.
She’d wanted to climb her way up the ladder. Maybe this was how it happened.
“Two targets. The primary is a woman, Carol Sark. Blonde. Non-combatant. She’s an analyst. There’s a tracker on her keys, not her person. It puts their last known position in Switzerland, somewhere remote. The most direct route to where they are is to fly directly to Geneva, then drive about two hours north and east to where they are. Based on current conditions, you could get there in as little as ten or eleven hours. Once every eight hours the GPS pings their location to—it looks like a key fob I have on a ring in the kitchen to your left, top drawer on the right-hand side next to the fridge. I tied a bit of blue ribbon on it.”
“And the other target?” The woman’s voice didn’t shift, but someone did walk across the apartment.
Were these the two assets the man in the shadows had mentioned? Was Kristina in charge now?
“Get him if you can.”
“Oh, this is going to be fun. We’ll make contact when it’s done. If you have anything else for us, follow communication protocols.”
“How will I know who to ask for?”
“Figure it out. Eyes closed.”
Kristina did as the woman ordered. Two sets of footsteps padded out through her front door, leaving her alone. She blew out a breath and turned to survey the empty apartment. A piece of paper crinkled underfoot.
She bent and picked up the notice from management.
Cameras down for maintenance.
How convenient.
…
Wednesday, Switzerland
“Why the act? Why fool me?”
Andy gripped the handle to the skillet. He’d expected this question in time and wondered what answer would be best. He still didn’t have a reason that sounded like it could pass for truth, but he was ready to get it over with. If he’d known all it would take was a little wine to make Carol begin asking the questions eating at her, he’d have suggested mimosas with breakfast instead of listening to her grind her molars all day.
“I made a tactical mistake,” he said.
�
�That’s what this is? A tactical mistake.” Carol snorted.
“No, that’s not what I said.” He let go of the pan and turned to meet her gaze. “There was a memo. About you. Management got it, including Mitch and Irene. We talked and everyone agreed, whatever was happening would happen quick. That was my mistake. My expectation of when things would happen was not based on fact, only gut feeling. It was the wrong call. I was the one who thought it would be best if we had a soft meet first. Something casual. Normal. And soon.”
“Why the calling? The texting? Why lead me on? Pretend to be Mark?”
Perhaps Andy had miscalculated how much wine Carol had drunk. Her cheeks were rosy, eyes a little glassy. He’d hurt her, and he knew it. She didn’t know about the cameras or that he’d been watching her almost twenty-four seven. Which was why he knew it wasn’t like her to put her feelings out there. The Carol he’d grown to know thought long and hard about what she said before opening her mouth. Right now, she was spouting whatever came to mind.
She deserved his honesty, but he couldn’t tell her everything. That a part of him had selfishly wanted to talk to her, to connect, to be that person. To live that lie, if only for a week.
“I liked talking to you,” he said finally. It was the tip of the iceberg. A little honesty, but not all of it.
“You didn’t have to be so thorough. You didn’t have to pretend.” She stared at the countertop, the life behind her eyes snuffed out.
That was his fault, and he’d own it. Not everything had been a ruse. Hell, he spent days talking to plastic bottles. To have a real, live person on the other end of his conversations was… It reminded him that he had a life. He wasn’t just doing a job, even if it was his only option.
Andy braced his hands against the edge of the sink and leaned toward her. Carol glanced up, brows lifting. Did she even know what she was saying? Or had the alcohol numbed her inhibitions enough she wasn’t herself? Nothing he’d seen had indicated she was a heavy drinker. The stress of it all could be enough to push her over the edge. If she had a little breakdown he couldn’t fault her, but he would have to do something about it.
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